GOOD MUSIC still matters, and so does supporting the scene this season. Here are five of the best recent releases from South Bay bands that may surprise a music lover in need; even better, they’re available at local, independent record stores (see Cover Story, page 24).
The Limousines, Get Sharp My favorite album of 2010, the secret to the success of this Campbell duo’s debut is that despite its pulsing, bleeping electronic trappings, it’s a rock & roll record through and through. From “Dancing at Her Funeral” to “The Future” to “Wildfires,” the songs are all basically about screwing or dying, or screwing and dying, or (as on the addictive anthem “Very Busy People”) the lamentable absence of screwing or dying. Dance music hasn’t beaten up rock and stolen its lunch money like this in a long time. Vocalist/lyricist Eric Victorino and beat architect Gio Giusti complement each other sonically, but on a deeper level they’re in a tug of war for hearts and ears. Free your mind and your ass will follow, or vice versa? There’s no certain answer, but the question rarely matters as much as it does on this record, where the beats pursue club perfection with wild abandon rather than cool-kids irony, and the clever lyrics peel back to reveal exactly the debauched and morbid obsessions that rock music was spawned to celebrate in the first place.
Happy Body Slow Brain, Dreams of Water San Jose native Matt Fazzi is best known for his stint in the mega-successful Taking Back Sunday, which came to an abrupt end earlier this year when he got canned for tinkering too much with the commercially successful TBS formula. Perhaps the best revenge is recording well; in almost no time, Fazzi has come out of the gate with this first record by the South Bay-based Happy Body Slow Brain. It’s better than anything his previous band has ever done, and totally unexpected in its synth-drenched atmospherics. Though rockers like “Emperor” and “The Bridge” have some echoes of Fazzi’s past work, he displays a range and vocal talent here that was previously under the radar. While TBS may have wanted Fazzi to recreate the past, this record looks ahead.
Jonny Manak and the Depressives, I Am Not a Bum … I’m a Jerk Always a blazing ball of energy as a frontman, Manak can rip through fistfuls of songs at a time. That’s perfectly acceptable for DIY garage punk, but in the past it’s felt like some good ideas were never developed beyond their initial sonic sketches. That’s why his latest is his best album yet. Meatier and richer than anything he’s done before, without losing the humor and culty pop-culture references, I Am Not a Bum … I’m a Jerk is the punk party record Manak was meant to make. “Cha Cha Cha Chewy” actually swings, and the Link Wray tribute “Link” is worthy of the guitar master himself.
Ugly Winner, Minutes, Years and Never Ugly Winner’s new album is more proof that the South Bay scene has hit its creative stride. Though there’s been a fondness for the brutal-but-beautiful rush of old-school post-punk bands like Wire bubbling out of the underground for some time now, this is artcore done right. “Bloodlines,” for instance, opens with shimmering, slow electric guitar notes and horns before rolling into a punk waltz, and “River Wild” flows from metallic strums to a full-on roar.
Seabright, Shimmer Seabright is the one-man ambient project from San Jose’s Justin Morales. Chill without being boring, it fuses the confessional style of a singer/songwriter to a bright electronic soundscape. Morales doesn’t need eight minutes to build a mood; some of his headiest grooves slip by in barely two minutes. Acoustic guitars and drum machines wind through the mix, but at the forefront is an evasive feeling of a place, a time, a feeling, an escape.
